How Natural Language Processing Improves Charting Efficiency
- Hadley Richards
- Jun 30
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 30
A psychologist has a session with a patient. There’s a listener present – not a “someone” but a something: advanced software. That’s A.I.-assisted software doing the “listening” – with the help of the core A.I. tool, NLP, Natural Language Processing.
But such software does more than just listen.
Consider, for example, what every conscientious mental health practitioner knows: oral content produced in a therapeutic session must be turned into written formats, both for the purpose of cultivating successful clinical outcomes, and also for administrative purposes such as insurance reimbursement. Initially, then, A.I.-assisted software uses NLP to turn the spoken word into the written word, smoothly distinguishing between therapist and patient to create an accurate verbatim transcript of a session.
Moreover, enhanced by an LLM trained for use in the mental health context, such software can go a step further, distilling the written transcript into a succinct summary of the session. Such software can even provide voice analysis yielding insight into emotions.
Numerous aspects of the therapist/patient process are reliant upon review of written records:
Identifying psychological pathology or irregularity
Gauging the practitioner’s level of empathy
Reassuring the patient by demonstrating consistent in-depth familiarity with all preceding stages in the process
Interpreting results as they manifest over time.
All these aspects benefit from the accuracy that flows out of content generated by A.I.-assisted software.
Human review and oversight of the output is of course still required – but such review and oversight will consistently reveal the value of bringing A.I. processing to behavioral healthcare.
The journey from the verbal interaction of a one-on-one or group session to the subsequent written session notes and corollary reports, diagnoses, and treatment plans is complex and time-consuming – or at least it was, before NLP and LLM altered the landscape. With A.I.-assisted software, the clinician benefits from time-saving efficiency and accuracy attendant to all administrative and analytical tasks, providing time for the most important element of mental health practice: understanding and addressing the needs of the patient.
Okay, but that still puts the focus on words. What else can A.I. do?
Megan Christiana
Solutions Consultant for Garnet River & Consa
